The Solitary Rambler

I recently suffered a huge knockback in life, which will take me a long time to recover from. I decide to take a tour in a corner of the Peak District, which falls within South Yorkshire, mulling over my situation that has left me feeling unsure as to where I go in life from here.....

At the beginning of March 2015 I had applied for a promotional job in the team, in which I had been working since January 2003. Unfortunately I was unsuccessful, which left me so disappointed I felt like all my energy had been kicked out of me, and so it became a story I wanted to tell in this film of “The Solitary Rambler”.

Three days after I had been out to film “Gritstone of Glossop” the weather forecast was set to be good, so that was the day I went out to film the next film to be called “Solace in Strines”. My first scenes to shoot were of Boots Folly above Strines Reservoir before driving on to Low Bradfield. I spent a long time filming in this lovely village as I wanted it to be the main location for this film, as well as its sister village of High Bradfield. I shot a couple of scenes in Low Bradfield where I begin my story of the job I applied for. I started a short circular walk, which took me via Agden Reservoir and then steeply on up to High Bradfield. I shot some key scenes here continuing my story about the job whilst trying to utilize the wonderful surroundings of the church and its fantastic views. I then took many more cutaways of High Bradfield before descending back to Low Bradfield where I completed my filming of these two villages.

Driving on I took the odd shot along Mortimer Road, a beautiful meandering lane that runs between the A57 near Strines and the A616 at Midhopestones, as I headed towards Langsett, my next location to shoot. I filmed many scenes around the reservoir carrying on with my story, but unfortunately most of this footage had to be excluded from my final edit later on in post-production because the film would have been much longer than 20 minutes, and that is the duration I want to keep at an absolute maximum for all my films now. Completing my shoot at Langsett I drove back along Mortimer Road filming one more important scene for my story on a hilltop from where I got great views of Broomhead Reservoir and towards Strines. My final scenes for the day would be at the Strines inn, where I filmed many shots outside of the pub as well as the peacocks that greeted me!

During post-production I had an idea of the music I wanted to use as usual, but this time it was going to develop from something I had composed a very long time ago. In fact, I would have been 10 years at the very oldest when I originally created this particular tune! Back then I remember looking at a book when I was in primary school, which had a picture of a church in a dramatic setting amongst the hills. From that image in my mind I created this tune, which at the time I called “In a Church Far Away”. Coming back to 2015 I thought this music would work in “Solace in Strines”, particularly as I was thinking of High Bradfield with the dramatic setting of its church. Therefore, I opted to make a new version of “In a Church Far Away”, which I feel worked very well. I also used a new string voice from my keyboard called “VP Soft”, which I think really added a beautiful sound to this soundtrack.